Into Oblivion
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: A fight with Doom leaves Johnny in a vulnerable position. Will Reed be able to come through for him, while all Sue can do is comfort her brother, who knows no better? And will Doom come back for him?
1. Chapter 1: Once More, With Curiosity

**Chapter 1: Once More, With Curiosity**

When it was first revealed that Victor von Doom had returned, no one had actually believed the newsreader. At first, the Fantastic Four had stared at the evening news in complete disbelief, a mild horror that overcame them with the fact that Victor was on the loose, presumably looking for revenge, and they hadn't even noticed. His solitary confinement in the prison made from his own metallic body had been escaped months ago, but no one had told them. There had been no hint of disaster, no sneak preview of what was to come. Nothing.

Not until that morning.

When they had first heard about his return, Reed had set to work on finding out where he had been all these months, where he had left Latveria and returned to the US without any legal permission. It hadn't taken Reed long to realise that Victor had come into possession of a unique technology, masterful in design, that used a similar energy to that of the cosmic storm which had given them their powers. If Victor used it on them, it would take their powers away, returning their bodies to a neutral state and storing the energy inside of Victor himself. Then, if he attempted to use his own abilities, it could potentially over-surge, resulting in the deaths of many humans from the radiation poisoning they'd experience from coming into contact with the cosmic energy.

So, it was no surprise that when they had finally tracked him down, the battle swiftly entered a large downtown showdown.

Crouched behind a large chunk of wall, which now served as one of the many pieces of debris in the vacant street, the Fantastic Four were hidden away, trying to desperately come up with a plan that would help them get the technology, in the form of a weapon, away from Victor without getting any of them hit by it; something that was proving much harder than they'd anticipated when they first went after him.

"I could always just whale on the guy and keep him busy," Ben suggested, taking his usual approach towards Victor.

"It's too risky," Reed said, putting a stop to what could be called a stupid idea. "As soon as he sees you, you're as good as dead."

"I could try and make him invisible to Victor," Sue suggested, knowing that Ben would be able to sneak up on their enemy easier if he wasn't seen.

Reed turned to her, giving her that protective husband look that she was more than used to now. "You've tried projecting invisibility before, and the last time you were unconscious for three days," he reminded her, shaking his head. "I'm not letting you do that again."

She frowned at him unfairly. "I'm getting stronger," she reminded him, "and if it works, surely it's worth it?"

But to no surprise, Reed wasn't alone in his opinion. Ben looked at her softly. "Reed's right, Susie. It's too much for you."

Johnny groaned loudly as he tried to look over the piece of rubble they were hiding from. "This is ridiculous!" He complained. "We should just do exactly what we did first time."

"Wing it and hope for the best?" Sue criticised, remembering their last showdown with Victor that had ended with them becoming official superheroes.

"No, I'll go supernova on his ass, Sue can contain it, and if we can get water from a hydrant again, we can freeze him."

It was a good plan, to be sure, but there was just one flaw. "He came back from that before," Sue reminded him.

"Only because of the Surfer's radiation," Reed added.

Johnny smirked. "And I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon.

Ben rolled his eyes, wondering how they got themselves into situations like this. "So, we're going for that plan?"

All eyes fell onto their leader. "Reed?" Sue asked, a dread feeling in her stomach that told her something wasn't going to go right.

But Reed nodded. "Right, OK."

Johnny grinned. "Cool!" He cried out, always eager to charge his flame to the highest temperature.

"Just make sure that we all stay out of range," Reed instructed as they all prepared to move again. "Johnny, you're going to have to move quickly, otherwise he'll have a clear shot at you."

Johnny flamed on one hand, showing it to Reed. "This is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me," he said, not for the first time in their three years as a team. "I'm not letting him take that away just because he's pissed off with us."

"Johnny-" Sue started, causing her brother to turn to her.

"What?"

She looked at him, a warning dying on her lips before she could form it into words. "Just be careful, OK?" She reminded him.

Far from feeling her worry, he grinned confidently. "Aren't I always?"

"No, not really," she smiled along with him.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "Relax, sis. What's the worst that could happen?"

Johnny flamed on and darted into the air, immediately adding the previous pace to their attack. However, because he was moving so quickly, Victor had trouble focusing enough to make a clear shot at Johnny. When the heat became unbearable, Sue expanded a force field to enclose the wall of flame that held Victor in place. Near to the top of the force field, however, there was an open space, so that Johnny could escape the vortex of fire before he had to stop.

But just as he flew out of the gap at the top, a flash of green light accompanied him. The light, focused into a steady ray, hit Johnny square in the chest, and it didn't take long for the rest of the team to realise what had happened.

Victor had gotten his clear shot.

Instantly flaming off despite his need to remain airborne, Johnny cried out, falling to the ground along with an array of rubble that had been disturbed during his circular flight path. Sue screamed, watching her brother fall to the ground without trying to fly again. Her concentration disappeared, and the force field shattered, leaving a familiar scene in the middle of the street.

But all Sue could think about was how she had seen her brother fall, and appear to be crushed. What if something had fallen on him? He'd have been killed, for sure. Her brother. Her baby brother. While she headed off for the direction in which he'd fallen, Ben and Reed continued to finish Victor off in the same way they had done last time.

"Johnny?" Sue called as she ran through the rubble, inhaling the dusty air around her. "Johnny!"

But there was no answer.

She began to move the rubble, using her force fields to lift the large chunks of wall away from the ground, each time terrified that her brother's mangled body might lay beneath them. The larger rubble gave way to smaller chunks, about the same size as the average human adult. Sue's energy began to fail her and emotions got the better of her, leaving her incapable of creating a force field strong enough to lift the rocks. Still desperate to find her missing brother, she resorted to using her hands. Of course, she wasn't nearly strong enough to move the rubble from it's place.

Then, she felt a pair of hands holding her wrists, gently prying her away from the rock she was trying to shift. "Careful, you're going to hurt yourself," Reed warned her, moving her a few steps away from the rock so that she wouldn't try to break free.

Sue looked up at her husband, frightened tears gathering in her eyes. "Johnny's underneath all of this!" She reminded him. "We have to get him out."

Ben stepped up, trying to reassure her, even though he, too, was concerned for his missing team mate. "Relax, Susie, I got this."

Whilst Ben manages to break some of the rocks apart, making them easier and manageable for him to move around, Reed continued to hold Sue back. Even though she was fighting to be let loose from his hold, he wasn't going to let her hurt herself by trying to find Johnny. He understood that she needed to find him, and he wanted to find him too, but he had to look out for Sue at moments like this where her own safety wasn't her concern.

Eventually, she settled for letting Reed hold her, his arm around her shoulder as she looked at the massive mess around them, waiting for a sign that her brother was alive. "Johnny?" She called out constantly. "Johnny, where are you?"

"Hey, kid, can you hear us?" Ben called out in his gruff voice, as he and Reed added their own calls to the damage around them.

But ten minutes passed, and there was still no answering call from him.

"He's not here, Sue," Reed said after a long silence fell over them.

"He has to be!" She said, knowing that her brother wouldn't have left the scene of fight without them.

"We've searched under every rock," Reed said, gesturing to the large street covered in broken up rubble. "He's not here. It's like he's vanished."

Sue frowned at him, her eyes narrowing. "People don't just vanish, Reed. I saw him fall!"

"We all did." Reed said softly.

"I'm not going home without my…" but she trailed off and didn't finish her sentence. Her eyes wandered for a moment, concentrating on a spot over her shoulder. "Did you hear that?" She asked after a moment had passed.

"Hear what?" Reed asked her.

"Shh!" Sue said, putting her hand on his chest.

In the silence, Reed heard a sound he definitely wouldn't have expected to hear in the middle of a scene like this. A child's cry. A sobbing. A frightened, heart-wrenching cry that could only come from a scared child.

"That." Sue said quietly, looking up at Reed. "Did you hear that?"

Reed was staring over her shoulder in the direction of the cry. "There wasn't a child anywhere near this place." He said, almost to himself, as he remembered that the area had quickly been cleared thanks to emergency services.

"Oh, God," Sue said, drawing her breath in quickly and biting her lip. "What if a child's been hurt?" She asked, contemplating worst case scenarios. "Because of us?"

"Let's just find them first," Reed suggested, before his wife could come up with a guilty speech about children. He knew that they longed for a child of their own, and that so far their attempts had been in vain, and the last thing he wanted was for this to set her back.

So, they searched. They went back over the rubble until they found a small gathering of rocks that had made a caved area over the ground. And there, protected from everything around him, they found a small boy curled up, with his face hidden as he cried the same cries they had heard from thirty feet away.

"Over here," Ben called to the others as he caught sight of their culprit crier. "I found the kid."

Immediately, Ben moved to check that the boy was OK, but Sue put his arm out to stop him. "Wait," she said, stopping him in his tracks as she looked down at the small boy. "He's scared, we can't just leap on him."

She approached him in a completely different manner, crouching down near the entrance of makeshift cave and waiting for the boy to look up at her. When he did, he squirmed backwards as far as he could go.

"It's okay," she assured him, in a gentle voice. "You're safe now. You can come out of there."

The boy turned his head, his face showing into the afternoon light for the first time, and Sue's eyes widened.

"Oh, my God," she whispered breathlessly.

"What?" Reed asked, stepping forward in case she had seen some injury of his.

"Those eyes," she said, never taking her eyes away from the boy. "Look at them."

They did look, but they didn't see what Sue did. "What about them?" Ben asked.

"They're Johnny's eyes," Sue said, almost in disbelief.

Ben laughed lightly. "You think Johnny's got a kid running around that he doesn't know about?"

The fact that Johnny might just have been the most promiscuous man in New York didn't make them doubt the fact that Johnny probably had thousands of children running around, but that wasn't want Sue was fearing right then. "No…I think…but that's insane…" she whispered to herself.

"He's still watching you," Reed said gently from where he stood near her side, "try and get him to come to you."

Sue held out her hand to the boy. "It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," she said, still speaking in soft tones. The boy began to crawl out of the space, and Sue smiled at the sandy-haired child. "That's it, come here," she encouraged him.

Crawling to where he had enough space to stand up, the boy didn't take his eyes off of her. Something seemed to register in his mind, and he went from small, wary steps, to more confident strides, until he had all but thrown himself into Sue's presence. He stopped a step before where she was crouched, putting his hand into hers and squeezing it tightly.

Sue smiled at him. "My name is Susan," she told him, "what's your name?"

The boy looked up at her, giving her a look as if he thought she were insane. "I know you," he told her simply. "I know my Susie."

Sue frowned slightly. "What's your name?" She asked him again, this time with more curiosity in her voice.

The boy titled his head to one side. "It's me, Susie," he told her. "It's Johnny."


	2. Chapter 2: Something Akin To Caution

**Chapter 2: Something Akin To Caution**

Shocked beyond belief, Ben and Reed came up behind Sue. They both crouched down alongside of her with amazed expressions, gazing onto the boy who had just revealed his identity to be the much younger version of the man they were looking for. However, Johnny was intimidated by all this attention, and moved closer to Sue. Still holding her hand in his, he turned so that his back was between her crouched legs.

"This kid is Johnny?" Ben asked incredulously, the first to speak after the boy revealed his name.

Reed was silent for a moment, before looking at the boy and asking him: "Johnny, what's your last name?"

The boy just stared at him, almost with a frightened look. Knowing that he clearly wasn't going to get an answer out of the boy, Reed looked to Sue for her to try. Sue lowered her head a little so that she was level with him from behind.

"Johnny, do you know your last name?" She asked him.

He nodded.

"That's good," she told him. "Can you tell me what it is?"

"Storm," he said in a tiny voice, still glancing a Reed with something akin to caution.

Reed sighed. "Johnny Storm," he murmured to himself, confirming the identity of the boy once and for all, it seemed. He was about to speak again, when he caught sight of blood on the boy's arm. Looking closer, he saw that there was a big scrape on his forearm that was bleeding slowly. Reed leaned closer, speaking in a soft voice just like Sue had done with him. "How did you hurt yourself, Johnny?"

This time, he answered Reed. First, he looked down at his arm, and then answered in another tiny voice. "Rock fell on it," he said quietly.

"Does it hurt?" Reed asked him. Johnny shook his head, but still winced when Reed made to touch it. "Don't worry," Reed assured him. "I'll fix that up for you."

"How the Hell does something like this happen?" Ben asked out of the blue, as he stood up. "We all saw him ten minutes ago and he was, well, normal, then!"

"It must have been a reaction from that technology that Victor was trying to use against us," Reed realised, as he, too got to his feet. "Clearly, he didn't test it thoroughly and it hasn't worked."

"Unless this is how Vic wanted it," Ben said.

Reed frowned a little. "What do you mean by that?"

"Think about it," Ben told him. "If he'd gotten all of us like that, we wouldn't be much use as kids, would we? It'd be real easy for him to get to us like that. We wouldn't remember each other, we wouldn't know how to use our powers, if we even had them…we'd be sitting ducks."

"Guys…" Sue said, getting to her feet.

"He remembers Sue, that's enough," Reed argued back, as Sue went unnoticed.

"Guys…"

"That's only because they grew up together."

"Guys…"

"We need to sort this out," Reed announced, "and we can't do that until we know exactly what that technology did to him."

"Guys…"

"Well then, we'd better get started, hadn't we?" Ben said, rather callously.

"Guys!" Sue cried out. "Will you stop arguing already? You're scaring him!"

Ben and Reed froze in place, seeing Sue properly for the first time. She was on her feet as well now, with the miniature Johnny in her arms. He had his legs wrapped around her waist, with his arms coiled around her neck. Both of them were facing the arguing men, only Johnny's head had rested on her shoulder, turning away from them with his face hidden away. Part of Reed instantly softened at the image; a real mother-child image.

"Now," Sue said, when they had fallen quiet. "Let's go home."

"What about the kid?" Ben asked, as she started to walk away.

She looked back at him simply. "He comes with us, of course."

**---**

Back at the Baxter Building, they immediately got to work on finding out what had happened. In the lab, the four of them gathered together as they had done many a time after a confrontation with something that had tried to destroy the entire city, but this time it was different. Sue was sat on the surface that they used for an examination table, just like in the hospitals, with Johnny pulled into her lap. Ben stood off to one side, watching whilst Reed prepared to clean the large scrape on the boy's arm.

Johnny looked up at his sister with wide eyes. "Are you mad at me, Susie?" He asked her.

"Of course not," she told him softly. "Why would I be mad at you?"

"You told me to be careful, and I didn't."

Sue flashed back to the last words she had exchanged with Johnny before the supernova. _Just be careful, OK? Aren't I always? _Hadn't this just proved it? She sighed, oblivious to the caring look her husband gave her. "I'm not mad at you, Johnny," she told him gently.

Reed came closer, with some anti-septic cleanser and a cloth. "OK, Johnny," he announced, trying to keep the friendly demeanour that seemed the only way to get an answer out of the boy. "This is going to sting a bit, okay?"

Johnny nodded. "'Kay."

For a few silent minutes, Reed went about cleaning the dust from the rubble that had settled onto the scraped flesh on Johnny's arm. It wasn't bleeding continuously, which was a relief, but it needed covering all the same to protect it from infection. The whole time, Johnny tried not to flinch, but as Reed applied the pressure of the bandage afterwards, he gave in and gave a tiny sniffle against his will.

"All done," Reed told him when he had finished.

Sue ran her hand over Johnny's hair. "Well done, Johnny, you were very brave," she told him brightly.

He looked up at her rather hopefully. "Really?" He asked.

She nodded. "Really, really," she confirmed, despite his little sniffle.

Johnny smiled at her, as Reed came back over, sitting down so that he was at a lower level than Sue and the boy. Ben smirked at the image, wishing he had a camera. At any other time, he'd have a comment about how Reed was going to give him a lollypop for being good, but at the moment, he was more sympathetic to the fact that Reed and Sue were trying so hard for their own family, and were so far from it, despite the fact that they were clearly ready built for the responsibility of a child.

"Johnny, can you tell me how old you are?" Reed asked.

He held up four fingers on his right hand. "Four. I'm a big boy when I'm five though." He told Reed, for once offering more conversation than was needed, which they took to be a good sign.

Reed smiled at him. "I'm sure you will be." Johnny nodded again, as if to certify this, whilst Reed looked up at Sue, and then at Ben. "So, this is Johnny Storm at four years old." He declared.

"Is this as sure as we can be?" Ben asked.

Sue looked between the two. "I can get out some old photographs, see if there's anything there," she offered. "It'll only be physical form though. I can't remember that far back clearly, but this is my brother. There's no doubt about that."

Reed smiled at her. "Anything that can help is great, Sue."

She hopped off the table, placing Johnny on the ground beside her. As she left the room, he naturally followed her, catching up with her and holding her hand in his own. Sue stopped for a minute, looking down at him, and he returned her gaze with a curious smile, as if wondering what was so strange about him holding her hand. Sensing something was wrong, he went to release her hand, but Sue caught herself, tightening her hold on his hand comfortingly, and giving him a smile.

"Come on," she told him brightly, pretending that there was nothing abnormal about this. "Let's go look at some pictures,"

The second they had left the lab, Reed leaned against his desk, running his hands over his face and groaning loudly into his palms. Not a good sign.

"So, what happens when the reporters start questioning?" Ben asked into the silence now that it was just the two of them. "They're going to notice that Johnny's missing when he likes to make a public display every single day."

"We have to keep this quiet," Reed reminded Ben. Luckily, they had left the scene of the fight before anyone had seen them, or more importantly, Johnny.

"I know," Ben nodded. "I wasn't suggesting that we tell everyone. I was just thinking about how those guys have a habit for sucking information out of our floorboards."

"I know," Reed softened. "Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like that. I just…"

"You and Susie not having much luck still?" Ben questioned, knowing the underlying reason for his best friend's stress.

Reed shook his head, staring at the floor. "I know we've only been trying for a few months, but it feels like something is preventing us from having a child," he admitted. "I've run as many tests as I can think of without needing more medical aids, but Sue wants to do this naturally."

"Reed, all this stress you're putting on yourself isn't helping with the whole 'having a baby' idea," Ben said, moving closer to Reed rather than where he had been standing about ten feet away. "You need to do what Susie thinks, and relax…let it be natural. Besides," he smiled, "if there are any two people in this world that deserve a kid of their own, it's you two. It'll happen."

Reed looked off in the direction that Sue had just exited in. "Let's deal with one child at a time, I suppose." He suggested, standing from his chair and starting to re-arrange everything back into it's original place.

"So, what does happen when people start questioning?" Ben asked again.

"We'll have to keep this low-key, and make sure that Johnny isn't seen," Reed planned. "I don't want to say that we have to keep it hidden, but the press will be all over this if it gets out."

"And in the meantime?"

He sighed. "We keep talking to him, and try to find out what happened," Reed decided, ashamed that it was the only solution he had right now. "I think Sue's our best shot for that. I've spoken to the forensics division, and they're going to send me the remains of Victor's technology so that I can study it. Perhaps I can figure out what went wrong."

Ben nodded. "It could be worse, I suppose."

"How so?"

"Well, at least he remembers Susie."

Ben's attempt at lightening the situation didn't have the desired effect, however. "Things could go downhill when he asks where his mother is, though," he pointed out.

"I thought their mom was dead?"

"She is, but she didn't die until Sue was eleven," Reed explained. "That would have made Johnny seven-years-old. If he's four at the moment, then in his mind, their mother should still be alive."

"Oh."

"Exactly."

Ben took a deep breath, at the same time as Reed released a long one. "Then it's even more important that he remembers Susie."

Reed nodded. "Let's just hope that whatever did this isn't permanent."


	3. Chapter 3: Your Susie, My Susie

**Chapter Three: Your Susie, My Susie**

Sue spent the whole day looking through her old photographs. There was no doubt that this was her brother, and that he was now four years old. She kept asking him questions, what had he done yesterday? Can he remember what happened? What is his favourite movie? Who is his favourite superhero? But it was no use. He didn't remember anything that had happened during the fight with Doom.

So, she surrendered, accepting that Reed would try his very hardest to find a way to change him back, and worked on keeping her younger brother happy. Naturally, his idea of happy hadn't changed at all, and it wasn't long before painting (with some of Sue's expensive watercolours, which she was now in mourning for) had ended up on every available space. Throwing his clothes into the washer and realising that the jeans and t-shirt were the only clothes that Johnny had, she marched him off to the bathroom to clean him up.

When they exited the bathroom, Johnny was wearing one of Reed's t-shirts, which was swamping the four-year-old so much that he very nearly kept tripping over the hemline, but it was all they had to cloth him in. She would have to go and buy some clothes for him, especially since they were unsure how soon this change could be reverse. In the living room, Ben and Alicia were sitting on the couch together, and Johnny scampered over. He ran straight into Reed's legs as he left his lab, but didn't stop to apologize before going over to Ben, who he learned that afternoon was always fun to play with.

Reed approached his wife. "Any luck?" he asked her, kissing her briefly.

She sighed, shaking her head. "The last thing he remembers is hearing the shouting in the rocks while he was hiding, which would have been us looking for him."

"Does he know what he was hiding from?" he asked.

"He said he was scared of the green light," she recalled, shrugging. "But he doesn't remember anything else."

Sensing her hopelessness, he embraced her. "It's something," he assured her, as she buried her head in his chest for a moment, just for comfort. When she pulled back, he gazed into her eyes. "Something's better than nothing."

----

"So, this is really Johnny?" Ben asked as they were all seated together in the living room. Ben, Alicia and Reed on the couch, and Sue sitting with Johnny on the floor where they were drawing together on Reed's blueprint paper.

Sue sighed, looking down at the boy, who was carrying on with his drawing of a dog regardless of his name being mentioned. The look of concentration on his face was enough to show it was really him alone. "Yeah, it is," she confirmed.

"Are you sure there's no more tests we can do just to make sure?" Ben queried.

Reed shook his head. "No, there's nothing else. All we can do now is to wait for the forensics to send us that weapon so I can start testing that and see what it has done to his genetic code."

Sue titled her head to one side. "I can think of one thing."

"You can?" Reed asked, wondering why she hadn't mentioned anything before.

She nodded. "You see," she said leaning closer to her brother and trailing her hands along the carpet. He saw her movement and looked up in anticipation, knowing this routine. "I remember when Johnny was this little, he was ticklish…" Johnny froze. "Right about…" he dropped his pen. "Here."

With that, Sue jerked forward and started to tickle his stomach, making him squeal with delight. "Susie, stop!" he cried out through his uncontrollable laughter. Reed smiled at the pair, seeing the same sibling closeness that he usually saw from the two of them in their kinder moments together.

Eventually, when Sue finished tickling him, Johnny lay on the floor for a few moments, his laughs exhausting themselves into loud breaths. He was still lying down when a look of realisation passed over him, and he launched himself towards Sue's feet. He started to tickle her back, and even Reed was amused to find that he didn't know how ticklish Sue's feet were. Ben and Reed both laughed to see how Johnny had turned the situation back on his sister, while Alicia just smiled to hear the siblings enjoying themselves. Sue finally managed to get a good hold on her brother, before lifting him into the air and dangling him before her upside down.

"No, put me down, I'm sorry!" he giggled in mid-air, his face bright red from laughing.

"Are you going to tickle me again?"

"No," he said, still laughing.

"Do you promise?"

"Promise," he grinned.

She gave him a look that was both suspicious and amused. She remembered this from many years ago. "Double promise?"

"Yes! Yes!" he laughed.

She put him back down onto the carpet, leaning back against the couch arm behind her, just beside Reed's legs. Reed unconsciously ran his fingers through the bottom of her golden hair as she got comfortable, and Johnny responded by looking at this interaction strangely for a moment.

"What's wrong, Johnny?" Sue asked, seeing his inquisitive look.

He frowned at Reed. "Why are you playing with my Susie's hair?" he asked Reed.

Reed suddenly alerted himself to what he was doing. "I like your Susie's hair," he said simply.

"Why?" Johnny asked again. "It's just hair."

"I know," Reed said.

"Then what makes it special?"

He fought back a laugh, clearly seeing the older version of him in the boy. "It's special because I'm the only one who does it."

"No, you're not," Johnny said, standing beside Sue and putting his fingers in her hair the same way Reed did. "See, now we both do it," he said proudly.

"Do you know what that means?" Reed asked him.

Johnny thought about it, touched Sue's hair again, and then shook his head. "No."

"It means that we both love your sister very much." Reed explained.

"Yeah, but it's not the same," Johnny argued, as if trying to prove a point and lay a claim on his sister.

"Why isn't it?" Reed asked, fully aware that the other three adults were finding this conversation so hilarious they were biting their lips to keep from laughing: Reed Richards, being outsmarted by a four-year-old Johnny Storm.

"Because we don't love her the same," Johnny said. "You're not her brother too,"

"No, I'm not, I'm her husband."

"Does that mean you had a wedding?" he asked.

"Yes, we did," Sue nodded. "We had a wonderful wedding."

Johnny seemed to think about this for a moment, with his head titled to one side in the same way that Sue moved when she was thinking hard about something. "But, if you had a wedding, where are all the babies?" he asked.

"Babies?" Reed and Sue asked at the same time.

"Yeah, the babies. Where are they?"

"There aren't any babies here," Sue told him.

"But there should be," Johnny argued. "Mom and Dad had a wedding and they had babies."

"Yes, but Mom and Dad were married for a long time before they had any babies," Sue reminded him.

Happy with this explanation, he nodded, and sat down in Sue's lap. He fidgeted himself into a comfortable position with his head on her shoulder, curled up against her sideways, and then pulled his arms around her himself to make a nice human cocoon.

"Looks like someone's tired," Ben pointed out.

Sue looked down at the snuggling boy. "Do you want to go to bed?" she asked him in a gentle voice.

"No," he protested, curling closer to her. "I wanna stay up with you."

She nodded wordlessly, agreeing, but within a few minutes Johnny had drifted off to sleep in his sister's arms. She didn't move him, though. They were only watching television quietly, so he wasn't being disturbed, and she was comfortable as well. She felt better for holding him, especially after her nagging thought that Doom had done this to Johnny for a reason, and she couldn't help but be scared that he might come back.

As she sat silently with him, Reed watched her from above on the couch. She was holding her younger brother as if she were holding her own child. As he saw the instinctual tenderness and protectiveness that his wife showed to a child, he longed for the days when they would have their own children to love, no matter how long and troublesome their journey to parenthood was.

Following his thoughts, Ben spoke into the silence. "Why do you worry so much, Susie?"

Sue looked up from where she had been watching Johnny's innocent face and stroking down his hair, particularly one stubborn piece that stuck up, and she knew that her efforts were futile. That piece of hair wouldn't begin to stay down until he was old enough to start gelling his hair when he was thirteen. "What?"

"Why do you worry about being a good Mom?"

She looked back at her brother for a moment, and then sighed. "I just…I don't want to mess up," she admitted quietly as Reed's fingers traced through her hair again.

"Susie, look at yourself," Ben pointed out. "Look at how Matchstick turned out. He turned out to be a good guy because of what you did for him when you guys were kids. You're not gonna mess anything up. I don't even think you could if you tried."

Sue smiled at him. "Thanks, Ben."

"No problem," he said simply.

Reed's hand came to settle on her shoulder as he leaned forward to confirm that Johnny really was sleep. "He's fast asleep, we should put him in bed," he pointed out.

"Yeah," Sue agreed.

They both left the room, and in a typical family style they put Johnny in bed. Sue lay him down, and Reed was there afterwards to pull the blanket over him. He'd spent part of his afternoon setting up the spare bedroom for him so that he had his own room to sleep in. When the boy showed no sign of waking in his new surroundings, Reed went to leave the room, but he noticed that Sue didn't follow him.

"Sue?" he whispered into the dark room.

"This is really happening, isn't it?" she asked, tracing a line along her brother's jaw softly. "This is really my little brother."

He put his arms around her from behind, kissing her neck gently to reassure her. "Don't worry, we're going to fix this."


	4. Chapter 4: First Mission For The Day

**Chapter Four: First Mission For The Day**

The following morning, when Reed awakened, he was shocked to find that it wasn't Sue he was immediately holding. Apparently, sometime during the night, Johnny had managed to worm his way between Sue's back and Reed's chest, and settle down for the night. Neither of them had seemingly noticed his presence, but he was amused to see that the now four year old boy was sucking his thumb. Johnny Storm sucking his thumb…how the paparazzi would adore that image. However, rather than leaving the bed and taking Johnny back to the spare room that was his temporary bedroom, Reed just watched him for a while. Would he one day get to see his child squeezed between him and Sue when he woke up in the morning?

Moments later, Johnny stirred, startling him from his thoughts. He took his thumb from his mouth, wiping it over Reed's nightshirt. When he realised that the nightshirt belonged to a person, he looked up at Reed, almost staring him down silently for a moment before seeing Sue on his other side. He climbed up onto his knees, and leaned over Sue's side, seeing that she was still sleeping. Of course, this just left Reed with a view of their backs.

"'Ello, Susie," Johnny whispered loudly.

"Mm…morning, Johnny," Sue mumbled back, clearly not awake yet.

"Can we go to the park today, Susie?"

There was a moment of silence where Reed watched all of the muscles in Sue's body tense. Now she was fully awake, and also fully aware of what had happened the day before. Then there was the third dawning thought…Johnny wants to go to the park…but Johnny can't be seen.

Taking charge, Reed edged closer to the pair. "I don't think we can go to the park today, Johnny," he told him, giving his wife a few more seconds to wake up.

"Why?" he moaned, turning his head over his shoulder and pouting at Reed.

"We've got a lot to do today," he explained. Johnny looked crestfallen, and judging from his usual boredom attacks on the Baxter Building, Reed knew that he had to do something to distract him. "But I'll tell you what, I've got a lot of very important things to do today, but I don't think I can do them all by myself. I need someone to help me."

The boy looked suspicious. "Who?"

"I don't know," Reed said, sounding dramatically helpless. "I need someone special, someone who can help me a lot."

This time, he perked up. "I can help lots, can't I, Susie?" he asked, looking down at his sleepy sister for approval. "I can help!"

Sue mumbled burrowing further under the blankets. "Of course, you can."

"See, I can help!"

Reed smiled at his enthusiasm. "Well, I guess we don't need to call Spider-man, then!"

"Spider-man sucks," Johnny told Reed.

"Language, Jonathan Storm," Sue warned from deep in the blankets.

"Daddy says that Spider-man sucks," Johnny told her unfairly.

"I don't care what your father says, I don't want you using that sort of language."

Johnny just pouted at her, while Reed contemplated how maternal she sounded even though she was half-asleep. Johnny leaned closer to Reed, turning so that he was no longer leaning over Sue but rather sitting before Reed. "Spider-man does suck," he said in a whisper. "No matter what Susie says."

Reed rolled his eyes. "Come on, we'd better get you some breakfast if you're going to be my helper today."

"Yeah," he said brightly, turning back to Sue again. "Come on, Susie, breakfast time!"

"You go ahead, I'll be up in a moment," she said tiredly.

"Oooohhhh…." Johnny moaned.

"Go on, Johnny, I'll meet you in the kitchen," Reed told him.

"Okay," he said, jumping out of the bed and running out of the room.

As he disappeared, his tiny padding footsteps still heard in the distance, Reed leaned closer to Sue, placing his hand on her hip and kissing that part of her skin where her shoulder met her neck. He felt her smile beneath him. "Are you feeling okay?" he asked her, knowing that she was normally wide awake the second she was woken up by him moving around.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she told him. "I'm just exhausted."

He frowned, a slight worry coming over him. "Don't tell me you were up all night worrying…"

"Not long," she assured him. "I got plenty of sleep."

He gazed at her warily. "Perhaps you should sleep in this morning…"

"There's a four year old around, Reed…"

"A four year old who's going to be helping me out today. You can get a few more hours sleep." He kissed her again, this time on her lips as she rolled onto her back. "Please, for me?"

"Okay," she surrendered. "Just a few hours, though. Don't let me sleep until noon or anything ridiculous like that."

"Okay," he agreed, before going off in search of her suddenly much younger brother.

----

At the kitchen table, Reed buttered some toast while Johnny sat down, leaning forward in his chair and swinging his legs. "What are we going to do today?" he asked Reed.

"You're going to help me out," Reed told him.

"Is it going to be fun?" he checked.

"A little," he assured him.

"Why isn't it going to be really fun?" he complained.

"Because we're going to have to make it fun," he explained.

"What have we got to do?"

"First of all, we have to make sure that we're very quiet so that Sue can sleep for a bit longer," Reed said, glancing towards the closed bedroom door.

"Why is she so tired?" Johnny asked, not taking his eyes off of Reed's face as he placed the toast down before him.

"She had a late night last night, so she's a bit sleepy."

"She does that a lot," he revealed. "She stays up all night reading her books. Mom says that it's bad for her eyes. Is it bad for your eyes?" he asked, his mouth full of toast the entire time.

"It is if you read in the dark."

"I think that's what Mom says she does. Where is Mom? Is she here too?"

"No, Johnny, she's not," he said simply, hoping that, for once, there wouldn't be a question that followed it.

"I didn't think so. Why isn't she here?" No, another question. Of course.

"Because your mother just can't be here right now, but it's okay because your sister is still here," Reed explained carefully.

"So, is Susie my new Mom?"

Reed stopped for a moment. What should he say to that? What could he say?

He sat down in the chair next to him. "Johnny, just because your mother isn't here, that doesn't mean that she isn't your mother," he explained. "Your sister is here, and I'm here too, and for the time being we're both going to look after you, but that doesn't make us Mom and Dad, okay? We're still Susie and Reed, but that doesn't mean we're not going to look after you, because we are. Do you understood that?" He hoped that he did, because he'd hate to have to explain it again, and couldn't think of another way to do it.

"Are you gonna make my dinner, and play toys with me and put me to bed at night and give me my baths?" Johnny asked.

"Yes, we are. Is that okay?"

"I guess so," he confirmed, before dropping the conversation completely. "What else are we doing today?"

Reed laughed a little. "You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"

"That's because you give lots of answers," Johnny pointed out simply, and it made Reed smile to hear that. "So, what are we gonna do today?"

"We've still got to be quiet because of your sister sleeping, but I need you to help me out by coming downstairs to find Ben and Alicia, do you remember them from last night?" Johnny nodded. "So, that's our first mission for today. So, we'd better get you dressed and ready."

----

Johnny and Reed went downstairs together to where Ben's apartment was beneath theirs. Sue had washed Johnny's clothes overnight when he was wearing Reed's t-shirt for a nightshirt, so now they were clean again and ready to wear. Ben opened the door, half-smirking at them. "I was wondering when you might get here."

"Good morning to you, too," Reed replied.

Ben grinned, recognising their usual morning greetings. "Where's your new lodger?"

"Right here," Reed revealed, stepping back to show the minature Johnny standing behind him.

"Come on," Ben said, stepping back. "In you come."

The pair entered the apartment, and Johnny dashed in before Reed, heading over to where Alicia was sitting on the couch. He climbed onto the couch and sits beside her, cocking his head curiously as she greeted him. Reed looked over and called out to him. "Johnny, you stay in here with Alicia for a moment, I need to talk to Ben."

"Okay," Johnny said absently.

"Be good," Reed half-warned, half-pleaded with him.

As Reed and Ben went into the kitchen, Johnny continued to stare at Alicia. "You can't see me, can you?" he asked her after a quiet moment.

"No, I can't," Alicia revealed.

"Ben says it's 'cause your blind."

"That's right," she smiled lightly.

"It doesn't sound very nice to be blind," Johnny commented.

"It isn't always very nice," Alicia agreed, "but I've been blind for a very long time, so I don't mind so much anymore."

He frowned. "But don't you wanna see the sky and the birds and the animals and stuff? Don't you wanna see people?"

"I can see those things," she told him. "But I see them in a different way to what you do."

"How do you see them then?" he asked her.

"It's difficult to explain."

"Can you see Ben?" he asked her.

"I can see him with my hands." He looked down at her hands. "If you see people with your hands, then you can see pictures in your mind instead of with your eyes."

Johnny thought about this for a moment and then nodded. "Maybe it's good that you see him with your hands and not your eyes," he told her.

"What makes you say that?" she asked him, amused at his reasoning.

"He's kinda funny looking."

Over in the kitchen doorway, Ben shook his head at the interaction as he turned towards Reed. "I've gotta say, some things never change."

"Apparently not," Reed agreed.

"Where's Susie this morning?" Ben asked.

"She was exhausted, so she's trying to get a bit more sleep," he told him.

"Rough night, huh?"

He shook his head. "She said she was only awake worrying for a while, but I think it might be something more than that."

"Something more?"

"I'm not sure," Reed shrugged. "Maybe she's sick or something. If she's still exhausted after a few more hours sleep, I'll talk to her about it."

"Good thinking, you know what she's like when she's sick," Ben reminded him.

"Exactly," Reed grinned. He loved Sue, but she was almost too stubborn to handle when she was sick.

"So, what's on the agenda today?" Ben asked.

"This afternoon Sue's going shopping for some clothes for him so he's got something more to wear than what he's got at the moment, and while she does that I'm going down to collect the remains of Victor's technology from the forensics professionals and see if I can figure out what, exactly, it did to him."

Ben nodded. "Alicia and I are goin' to see her stepdad later on, but if there's anythin' you need a hand with, let us know."

"Sure, thanks," Reed smiled.

"Mind you, surely you and Susie need to get used to havin' a kid around the place," Ben smirked.

Reed simply raised an eyebrow. "Living with you and Johnny under the same roof prepared us for that a long time ago."

"Very funny, stretch."

"If I don't see you before, I'll see you for dinner tonight, yes?" he checked.

"Ready for seven?"

"Isn't it always?" Reed pointed out, as they left the kitchen and went into the living room. "Johnny, come on, time to go."

The boy look at Reed in disbelief. "But we only just got here!"

"Come on," Reed repeated.

"You said it was a mission!"

"You said it was a mission?" Ben repeated, questioning.

"I had to say something to make it sound cool," he said, before turning to Johnny again. "Johnny, now, come on."

"We haven't done any missions!" he complained.

"Don't argue with me, Johnny. We're going back upstairs now."

Johnny slipped off the couch, sulking mildly as he walked towards where Reed was standing at the front door. "You said it would be fun," he moaned.

"I said it would be a little bit fun. Now, say goodbye to Ben and Alicia--"

"Bye Ben and Alicia," he said stroppily as he allowed himself to leave the room without Reed.

Reed rolled his eyes, shaking his head at Ben. "Kids."


	5. Chapter 5: Not Those Sorts of Fears

**Chapter Five: Not Those Sorts of Fears**

Later that evening, as she had assured her husband, Sue felt fine. In the afternoon, after she roused from her late sleep just before midday, she'd taken advantage of the silence of their apartment to get some cleaning done. Then, when Johnny and Reed had returned from their trip to the forensics department to collect what was left of Victor's weapon, she'd disappeared to the mall to get her younger brother some extra clothes, just a few outfits in case Reed couldn't find an immediate solution. Luckily, Johnny was more than content to watch television for the afternoon while Sue was shopping, so that he wasn't disturbing Reed in the lab.

She was disappointed, yet not completely surprised, that Reed was unable to figure out straight away what the weapon was supposed to do and how it worked, and come dinner time she had to go into the lab herself and drag him away from his desk. Alicia and Ben met them for dinner, and the five of them sat around the dinner table in what had become their regular seats; Reed at the head of the table, with Sue on his left and Johnny beside her, and then Ben on Reed's right and Alicia beside him. Johnny, however, was sat on a pile of cushions from the lounge couch so that he was level with the table without standing on his chair, as he had done for his breakfast.

"Have you ever thought that this might be some kind of sign?" Alicia asked them as they tucked into Sue's spaghetti.

"A _sign_?" Reed asked warily.

"Everything happens for a reason, after all," she shrugged simply.

Sue gave a reassuring look to Reed, who always seemed to clash, never harshly, but always with a difference of opinion to Alicia, who believed in the spiritual. Reed, on the other hand, believed that there was a scientific reason for everything. "Alicia, I now that we've had some strange things happen to us over the years, but _this_--" she looked at her brother, who was turning the spaghetti strands around his fork with both hands on the utensil, oblivious to everyone speaking about him. "--is _more _than just a sign."

Alicia nodded, vaguely, and it was clear that she wasn't abandoning her theory. "It might be worth keeping the idea in consideration based on the lack of logical explanation," she suggested.

"There _is _an explanation," Reed said quickly. "We just haven't found it yet."

"But is there _really_?" Alicia asked him.

Reed nodded. "Whatever technology Victor was using for his weaponry is extremely advanced science; so advanced that it was unpredictable, even for Victor's control. It's that technology that did this, _not _fate or destiny," he turned back to his dinner. "This isn't a sign, it's reality."

"Where's reality?" Johnny asked, looking up from his food curiously and turning to his sister. "Is that where the pizza man comes from?"

Sue was saved from debating the existance of reality with her currently much younger brother when Alicia continued her theory. "Who's to say there's no such thing as a fated reality?" she questioned, to which Reed had no answer. The truth was, he had plenty of answers, but all of them involved reeling off the names of scientists; half of which Sue wouldn't even know.

"Well, what's your idea?" Ben asked her.

"With Reed and Sue trying for a child, there are bound to be certan insecurities in mind," she pointed out.

"Insecurities?" Sue doubted.

"Well, Sue, were you nervous or frightened about what might happen when you fell pregnant?" Alicia asked her.

"Of course," she answered immediately. "I mean, we have to think about the radiation effects and whether that might affect the birth or the pregnancy-"

"Not _those _sorts of fears," Alicia interrupted her. "Were you scared about being a mother? Were you afraid that you might not be able to raise a child with the life you lead?"

She was met with silence. Reed noticed the far-off and worried expression on his wife's face, the same one that had plagued them for many sleepless nights, and stepped in once again. "Alicia, look..."

"It's perfectly natural to be afraid," she assured them. "Everyone is worried about whether or not they'll adjust to being a parent. It's a big change and no one can be fully confident on that, especially first time parents. But Sue raised Johnny for the majority of his childhood, so it's clear that she's capable of raising a child. Perhaps Johnny reverting back to a childlike state is going to prove to you both that it's entirely possible to balance a child with the life you lead - a way of assuring you that you're going to be all right."

There was another silence after she had spoken, as the couple took in their words. It was broken by Johnny slurping especially loud on his spaghetti and giggling at the sound afterwards. Sue watched the amused expression on his face as he tried to mimick the sound again, forgetting to scold him about table manners because she couldn't bear the take the innocence away from him. "If that's the case," she said, never taking her eyes off her brother, "I hope you're right, Alicia."

"Trust me," Ben joked in his gruff voice. "The woman's never _wrong_."

---

It was the middle of the night when a pierce scream broke into Sue and Reed's bedroom. Instantly, they bolted awake, simultaeneously reaching for robes as they fled from the room and towards Johnny's bedroom. There, they found Johnny screaming in the centre of the room, covering his face in fear but facing the window. He didn't notice his sister and her husband coming to his side until Sue gathered him up in her arms with a graceful ease and sat down on the bed with him, holding him close to her whilst he grapsed for extra comfort. Reed crouched down on the carpet before him.

"Johnny...Johnny, sweetie, it's _okay_, it's okay..." Sue soothed him. "It was just a bad dream..."

But he shook his head against her, wrapping his arms tightly around her neck. "No bad dream...no bad dream..."

Sue frowned. "Johnny, _shh_..." she soothed, until his sobs had calmed into deep, shaking breaths. "Johnny, what's wrong, what happened?" she asked him.

"I woke up and there was green at my window," he explained, his voice wavering in fear still and he kept sniffing in between words and coughing slightly from the overwhelming cries.

"Green?" Reed murmered, instantly ten times more concerned as he stood up, going over to the window. He looked through the glass from every available angel, even unlocking the window and looking outside, but he saw nothing.

Johnny lifted his head from Sue's shoulder and then squirmed out of her arms. He went over to Reed's side and placed his hands on the windowledge, peering his eyes out over the side as he stood on tiptoes.

"Johnny?" Reed asked, watching the intent expression on his face as he began to lean his head to one side, as if listening.

"Shh..." he told Reed quietly.

Sue stood from the bed, and went over to them. "Johnny, what are you doing?" she asked him as she lifted him onto her hip. "Johnny?"

"Can't you hear him?" he asked her, still staring intently at the window as Reed tried to figure out what he was looking at.

"Hear who?" Sue asked, getting more confused by the minute.

"_Him_," Johnny said with more insistance, as if that alone should explain everything.

Reed and Sue exchanged looks of growing concern. Reed stood before Sue and directed Johnny's attention towards him rather than the window. "Johnny, who can you hear?" he asked softly.

"The Man with the Mask."

----

There was no chance of Johnny going back to sleep anytime soon, especially not in his own bedroom. Ben was also upstairs with them now, after Reed had fetched him from his own sleep. The two of them searched the building and the surrounding area and watched the security tapes from the last hour but found nothing. All the while, Sue sat in the lounge with Johnny. He hid himself against her, gripping her so tightly that it almost hurt but she couldn't bring herself to ask him to release her a little. Truth was, she was terrified as well. What if they had been too late? What if whatever was out there got him? What if they hadn't woken up at all? Who had he even been listening to?

The Man with the Mask, he had said, but who was it? The answer was staring them in the face, but she didn't want to accept it. They knew what green cloaks and masks meant.

It meant Doom.

"There _has_ to be something out there," Sue insisted when Reed came back from the lab shaking his head.

"There wasn't anything," he admitted helplessly. "Even on the security tapes all that came through was a flash of light, but that wasn't green."

"That means the kid was right, though," Ben pointed out. "There was definately something at his window."

"_Shhh_!" Sue hissed at Ben. "Keep it down or he's going to get frightened all over again," she reminded him, going back to rubbing the soothing circles on her brother's back that had reduced his cries to sniffles and hiccups.

"Yes, he was right," Reed said, keeping his voice low, "but that doesn't mean to say that it was Victor..."

"But it doesn't rule him out as an option either considering he's still at large," Ben reminded him.

"True," Reed admitted with a reluctant nod.

"He's terrified," Sue murmured as Johnny regripped his arms around her neck once again, now sniffling into her shoulder. She sighed, biting her lip as she looked to her husband. "Reed...I...I..." Reed looked at her, seeing how helpless she looked with the boy in her arms. "I never looked after him when he was this young," she admitted, with unshed tears in her eyes. "I don't know what to do for him. I don't know how to take the fear away from a child this young..."

As she broke off, holding her brother tighter, Reed approached her, sitting down on the arm of the chair beside them. He placed his arms around her shoulders. "All he needs to know is that he's not alone, and that everything is going to be okay," he assured her instinctively. "He just needs to know that he's all right. That's all."

Sue nodded, looking down at Johnny as she smoothed his hair back, attracting his attention. "Johnny...Johnny, look at me, please," she asked him gently. He raised his head, sniffing and wiping his nose on his sleeve. "It's going to be all right," she assured him. "You're safe, you're okay..."

"But the Man with the Mask said stuff," Johnny told her, his voice high-pitched from crying.

"What did he say to you?" Reed asked.

Johnny looked at him strangely, his fear and need for sleep bringing back the original mistrust in Reed from when he had first been re-introduced to him days before.

"It's okay, Johnny, you can tell Reed," Sue prompted.

"Man with the Mask said that I'd been naughty, and that I had to be punished and go away with him forever," Johnny revealed. "But I _haven't_ been naughty, have I?" he asked Sue. "I was good today and helped Reed with all his jobs." He turned to Reed. "I was a _good_ boy today, wasn't I?"

Reed gave him a comforting smile and nodded. "Yes, Johnny, you were a very good boy."

"I don't wanna go away with the Man with the Mask, Susie, I wanna stay here with you," Johnny murmured, collapsing against her again, this time curling up against her chest.

"Don't worry, you're staying right here," she assured him. "I'm going to look after you, okay? I'm going to make sure that you're safe." Johnny looked up at her. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, I promise."


	6. Chapter 6: I Like Stars and Planets

**Chapter Six:**

When breakfast was over the next morning, Sue pushed back her chair, gathering up the used breakfast plates. She silently put them into the sink, not bothering to wash and dry them before she turned back to the table, watching a very jittery Johnny look around him, wanting to jump up and beg for what she knew he wanted but resisting because he knew that Sue didn't want him to say it in front of Reed in fear of the protests. She cast a look to her husband, who was currently scouring the newspaper in a way that stopped Johnny seeing the photographs of the downtown devastation that he had no memory of.

"Okay, Johnny," she said brightly. "Go and put your sweater on and we'll go."

"Yeah!" he cried, jumping down from the chair and racing out of the room.

Reed looked up from the paper suspiciously. "Go where?" he asked.

"We're going to the park," she told him.

The paper was thrown down on the table top. "What?!"

"The park," she repeated calmly. "It's the patch of grass down the street-"

"I know what a park is, Sue," he told her.

"It's just for an hour or so, Reed, it'll be fine," she assured him.

He gave her a pointed look, taking a gentle hold of her wrist as she stood at his side to take his empty coffee cup. "Last night something was at his window," he said quietly, not sure how long it would take Johnny to pull his sweater on and race back. "He was up all night having nightmares in our bed."

"Which is precisely why he needs to do something to take his mind off it," she pointed out. Reed just sighed as she removed the coffee cup. "I know that we don't want him seen, but I can explain to anyone who questions it that he's the son of a friend of mine, just like in the mall. Things were fine then."

She put the mug into the sink with the breakfast plates and then went back over to him. "Nothing I can say is going to change your mind, is it?" he realised.

"Not at all," she shook her head, before leaning down to kiss him quickly. "You're welcome to come with us, of course."

"I think I'd better stay here," he decided. "I've still got lots of tests to run."

Her gentle smile disappeared. "As long as those tests are on the weapon and not my brother, that's fine."

"Have a good time, though," he continued.

"I'm sure we will," she nodded, her smile returning.

"Look what I've found!" came a shout from down the hall.

"Uh oh, that sounds like trouble," Reed grumbled.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Sue assured him. "You go see what he wants while I get my coat."

------

Reed found him, rather worryingly standing in the middle of his lab. Instead of causing havoc with the machinery and buttons around him, however, he was stood with his face turned upwards, completely in awe of the makeshift solar system that Reed had assembled to hang in correct order and orbit from the high ceiling of the lab. "Look!" he said, pointing upwards when he saw that he wasn't alone. "It's so cool!"

"It is, isn't it," Reed nodded, standing beside him to look up.

"Did you make it?" he asked in wonder.

"Yes, I did."

Johnny looked back to the brightly coloured orbs. "Those are the planets in the sky, aren't they?"

Reed smiled. "That's right," he praised. "But it's not all of them, though."

Johnny frowned. "Why not all of them?"

"There's too many," he pointed out. "They just wouldn't fit."

Johnny looked around at the large room. "Not even in this room?"

"Oh, definitely not," Reed said. He lifted Johnny onto his shoulders, securing his hold on him so he knew that he wouldn't fall. "You see, each planet is part of a solar system," he explained. "There are lots more solar systems in the universe. This is our solar system and we have nine planets-"

"Ten," the boy interrupted.

"No, just nine," Reed told him.

"And the moon," Johnny pointed out. "The moon makes ten."

"The moon isn't a planet," he explained.

"Why not?"

"You see the sun, here?" Reed said, pointing to it. Johnny nodded. "Planets go round in circles around the sun, over and over again, but the moon doesn't go around the sun, because it makes circles around Earth all the time."

"Earth is our planet," Johnny boasted his knowledge.

"Yes, that's right."

Johnny was quiet for a moment, leaning back slightly on Reed's shoulders as he kept his eyes upwards. "I like stars and planets," he told him.

"I like them too," Reed agreed.

"They're kinda nice, and cool."

"Really, really cool."

"Can we go see them one day?" Johnny asked hopefully.

He smiled. "One day," he said, knowing that to this version of Johnny, he really would one day.

"All of us?" he checked. "Susie and Ben too?"

"All of us," he promised. "And we'll go in a big spaceship."

"A rocket?"

"A big rocket," he nodded. "And you're going to fly it there."

At this, Johnny's eyes looked ready to burst out of their sockets. "Really?!"

"Really," Reed nodded. "And me, you, Sue and Ben will go see the stars and planets right up close."

"And I'll get to fly the rocket?" he repeated.

"Yeah, you will," he nodded. "But don't tell Ben that," he added conspiratorially.

"Ben?!" Johnny cried. "Ben can't fly my rocket!"

"Well them, you better not tell him about our vacation to the stars then," he warned lightly.

"Okay," Johnny saluted, as Reed set him back down on the ground. "Are you coming to the park with us?" he asked.

"I can't, but you and Sue are going to have a good time," he nodded.

Having had his question answered, Johnny scurried out of the lab. Reed went to leave moments later, only to walk almost directly into Sue, who came into view only seconds before he would have hit her. She smiled at his surprise, and then kissed him deeply. When she pulled back, she smiled even more. "You're going to make a brilliant father," she mused.

"Hmm…you saw that?"

"I've been here every second," she said, phasing into invisibility for a moment to prove how. "It's moments like that which make me even more willing to carry your child."

"Well," he smiled. "I guess we're going to have to make that happen then, aren't we?"

He leaned down to kiss her again, but they were interrupted.

"Susie! Come on!"

She laughed. "As much as I'd love to make that a reality, it seems I have an prior engagement," she point out. "Don't drive yourself insane while I'm gone, okay?"

"I'll try," he laughed, as he watched her little brother grab her by the hand and physically drag her towards the door.


	7. Chapter 7: Wanna Be A Grown Up

**Chapter Seven**

Shopping was a fearful task, enough to strike fear into the heart of some of the greatest men – apparently this also included those of the superhero nature. However, whether it was shopping in general, or just shopping with Sue, that bought so much terror into the room whenever the words were mentioned, remained to be seen. At this moment, it was the combination of both that was making Reed Richards start to sweat a little.

"If Johnny needs new clothes, just go to the mall," he suggested.

"It's not just that, we need food as well," his wife pointed out. "And I can't take Johnny with me again in this state, it'll look suspicious. So you'll have to come with me."

He choked on his coffee a little. "That's one of the most horrible ideas I've ever heard," he said, shaking his head.

"Well, I'm not going on my own," she told him.

"Why not?"

It was Johnny who contributed here. "Susie has a shopping problem."

"Thank you, Johnny," Sue grimaced.

"But you do," he argued. "Daddy says you'll bankrupt a millionaire," he said, his pronunciation far from correct but they understood what he was trying to say.

"Hmm..." Ben mused from beside the youngster. "Victor was a millionaire, and you helped bankrupt him..."

"Ben," she snapped lightly. "Not helping."

Johnny frowned, looking at Ben. "Who's Victor?" he asked.

Before Ben had the chance to answer, Sue turned back to Reed. "Come on, Reed, it'll be fun."

Reed put a hand on his wife's cheek. "Sue, darling, honey, sweetheart...I love you. But I don't think I can face shopping with you ever again."

She pouted. "Just the kids department and then the supermarket," she insisted.

"Honestly?"

She nodded. "We'll go to the kids department, get some clothes for Johnny and then get some food...then we'll come back...maybe have some alone time..."

It worked instantly.

"Johnny, have a fun afternoon with Ben," Reed said hurriedly. "Ben, take him out and don't come back for at least twenty-four hours."

Ben raised his rocky brow. "Will six hours do?" he asked. "Me and Alicia are going to her parents for her mom's birthday."

"Yes," Reed nodded. "Six hours will do."

* * *

Getting Johnny to stay with Ben and Alicia, however, was more complicated. He'd agreed to stay home with them all while Sue and Reed were getting ready to go out, but the second he saw them head towards the door, he'd decided he wasn't all that pleased about his sister going out and leaving him. It ended with him hanging on to Sue's leg and begging her not to go.

Sue sighed, turning to Ben. "Are you sure you don't mind doing this?" she asked.

"We don't mind, Susie," he waved off.

"Are you really sure?" she checked. "Because if you want we can-?"

"Susie, it doesn't matter how many covers you have, that kid is going to shout out something in the store, or when an old lady tells him how cute he is, he'll tell her what his name is, and that he's your brother," he pointed out. "The whole world knows you only got one brother called Johnny. So don't worry about us and go shopping."

"Okay," she sighed. "Thank you."

"No problem." He looked down at Johnny. "Come on, kid, party time."

Johnny frowned, clinging harder to Sue's leg. "No. I wanna stay with Susie."

"Johnny," she warned him.

"No!" he insisted.

"You'll have fun playing with Ben and Alicia," she assured him.

"I wanna have fun with you," he argued.

"I'm sorry, Johnny, but I need to go shopping," she told him.

He looked up at her. "I can help!" he insisted.

She shook her head. "Sorry, but this grown-ups stuff."

He looked down again, pouting. "Hate being little," he hugged. "Wanna be a grown up."

The irony in his words silenced them all for a moment. "Well, when you're as old as I am you can go out on your own as well," Sue told him quietly.

He gaped at her. "But that's about a hundred years from now!" he argued. "I can't wait that long!"

She frowned. "How old do you think I am?" she tested.

He shrugged, not releasing his hold on her leg. "Old enough to have all the fun."

She crouched down to his level. "How about you play with Ben and Alicia this afternoon, and if you're really good I'll bring you home some ice cream for after dinner?" she suggested to him.

Johnny narrowed his eyes. "Will it be chocolate?" he asked.

"It sure will," she smiled.

He still looked sceptical. "And all I gotta do is play with Ben and 'Lisha?"

Ben put his hand on the boy's tiny shoulder. "We can do anythin' you want, kid."

Johnny contemplated this for a moment, then nodded. "Ok."

"That's my boy," Sue praised. "You have fun, and be good."

She stood up, ready to leave, and Alicia grinned into the air before her. Sue watched her, before asking. "What?"

"You're such a mother," she pointed out.

Sue shook her head. "Don't start."

"Don't worry, Susie," Ben assured her, not realising that Johnny had darted off behind them and was occupying himself in a questionable way. "The kid'll be fine...hey, get that out of your mouth!"

* * *

In order to keep Johnny occupied, they quickly realised that indoors wasn't going to cut it. He had a massive store of energy that apparently had been there for his entire life, and now they had to burn it off before Johnny decided to escape from the building. They ended up on the roof of the Baxter Building, where Ben had set up an obstacle course out of whatever he could find lying around. He stood Johnny at one end of it, and indicated to a line of rope at his feet.

"Right, this is the starting line," he said. "There's another line by the other wall, and that's the finish line. Before you get to the finish line, you have to do the obstacle course."

Johnny frowned. "Wassat?"

"It's like an army training course," he told the youngster.

He perked up at this. "Do spacemen do them too?"

"Absolutely."

"Cool!"

Ben started to walk around the course to try and explain it to him. "Well, first off, you have to run through all these poles without touching any of them. Then you have to run up to this long pole and you have to jump either side of it like this," he said, showing him how to do it. "Then you get on your belly and crawl underneath the tarp. Then when you get to the other side you run around the metal block over there and you run over the finish like. You have to go as quickly as you can without falling over. Think you can do that?"

Johnny nodded eagerly. "Uh-huh."

"Are you ready?"

"Ready!"

"Set?"

"Set!

"Go!"

* * *

Sue and Reed came back hours later, obviously much later than they had planned considering the look on Reed's face. It was amusing to see his arms stretching dramatically to hold all of the bags in his arms without needing to rush backwards and forwards between the elevator while putting the food away. When Reed took the bags into the kitchen, Sue went over to where Ben and Alicia were sitting.

"You took your time," Ben pointed out.

"Sorry, traffic was awful," she groaned. "I swear, half of the food must have defrosted. Was he ok for you?"

"Yeah, he was great. No trouble."

Sue raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Ben nodded. "One think he don't remember is how he liked to play tricks on me, and I'm glad of that."

"Where is he?" she asked, looking around with suspicion about how quiet it was.

"Watching television," he said.

"Susie!" came an excited call, followed by quick footsteps as Johnny launched himself at his sister.

"Or at least, he was," Ben grumbled.

"Did you have fun with Ben and Alicia?" Susie asked him.

He nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I did an obstacle course!"

"Really?" Sue asked him brightly.

"Yeah, spacemen do them!" he told her. "I want to be a spaceman."

"I know you do," she nodded.

"Reed says I'm going to fly us all to space one day," he told her.

She smiled at him, putting her hand on the top of his head. "I know you will, Johnny."


End file.
